Positives out of the defeat in Dewsbury

 

Liberal Democrats will be disappointed that they couldn’t quite win the local council seat in the by-election in Dewsbury last week, especially as their candidate was a well respected former councillor for the ward, missing out as they did by just 108 votes Nevertheless there are a couple of positives to be taken out of the result.

 

Firstly, this was another seat in West Yorkshire where the main parties had seen off the BNP. This was after all a BNP seat going into the by-election and a couple of years ago it might have been expected that they would have won the seat. But they didn’t. This follows the by-election in Leeds last month where the BNP finished in fourth place and saw their vote share cut. In both cases our increased campaigning efforts saw the BNP – a good lesson for the future.

 

Secondly, the Labour party with two councillors in the ward already and the local MP threw the kitchen sink at this and yet their vote share too was down. Indeed, when I was campaigning in Chickenly, a former council estate in the east of the ward, although there were several posters up for the Labour candidate, I got the feeling, when chatting to people, that support for her was in spite of the fact she was the Labour candidate not because of it.

 Which leads to the third point: the swing achieved by the Liberal Democrats in Dewsbury East (7.2%) would be enough to secure an extra seat in next year’s European Parliament elections. So, as I say, several positives after all.

Yorkshire universities point the way to how it could be in the region

Congratulations to the two Yorkshire institutions (York and Sheffield) which make the top 100 of world universities. Inevitably dominated by the Americans, the list has 17 UK universities in all, with Yorkshire performing better than all parts of the UK save London and Scotland. An honourable mention should be given to Leeds which finished just outside the top 100 in 104th place.

 

It just goes to show what can be achieved in the region when its institutions and organisations have a degree of financial autonomy. Compare that with the Institution of Civil Engineers report today pointing out that Yorkshire and Humber suffered from the lowest transport funding of any UK region. The report found £200 is spent per capita on transport in Yorkshire and Humber, compared with a £600 average in the south. Planning and spending on transport is, of course, carried out from Whitehall. There is surely an overwhelming argument that says decision regarding transport projects has to be devolved to the regions to try and equalise this mismatch in spending.

Credit crunch means companies will have to work harder – and not before time

Perhaps one of the benefits of the credit crunch will be that companies will have to work harder for our pound than they have been used to. And not before time. By way of an example this is my wife’s experience with Citroën.

 

In the summer she a saw a car parked outside in the street she rather looked the like of. On closer inspection it turned out to be a Citroën Pluriel. She went on to the Citroën website and clicked on the box requesting a test drive. Some days later she received a load of promotional material and details of the local Citroën dealer, but nothing specific about a test drive. We then rang the dealer, but nobody from the sales team was available, but the receptionist promised someone would ring back. They never did. Undeterred, some days later, when passing the dealership, we dropped in. The conservation went something like this:

 

Us: Can we test drive a Citroën Pluriel?

Citroën: We haven’t got one in at the moment.

Are you planning to get one in?

Yes.

When?

Probably 2-3 weeks.

Ok. Do you want to ring us when it comes in?

Ok.

Do you want to take our details?

Oh, yes.

 

So we left our details back in July and we haven’t heard a peep since. Interesting then to see then that Peugeot-Citroën, at about the same time, warned that car sales were about to decline. Hardly surprising they should come to that conclusion. Today there was a full page advert for their cars in most of the papers. From a marketing perspective it misses the point rather.